


It's Not Easy Being Green (With Envy)

by TheWrongKindOfPC



Series: Ryan Ross's vampire kitten [2]
Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco, Young Veins
Genre: Gen, Supernatural Elements, vampire kitten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-21
Updated: 2011-11-21
Packaged: 2017-10-26 09:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/281662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheWrongKindOfPC/pseuds/TheWrongKindOfPC
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-split fic in which Panic and The Young Veins grow up and mature and come to terms with the fact that Ryan's cat is actually a vampire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Not Easy Being Green (With Envy)

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on my LJ May 29th, 2011.

When Jon asks Ryan if he would possibly be willing to take Spike in when the tour ends, Ryan is surprised he needed to, or even felt he had the right. In Ryan’s eyes, Spike hasn’t been Jon’s cat ever since the day Jon was too squeamish to feed the pet store mouse bought especially for the purpose to her. Ryan is actually a little surprised at himself--as a kid, he’d never had too many problems with pain, but the sight of his own blood, from scraped knees or accidents in the kitchen, had always freaked him out.

Spencer used to tease him about it, about how Ryan could remain completely stoic about any injury right up until the moment that he looked down and saw the blood, and then freak out completely. Ryan kind of wishes his momentary panic at the sight of his own blood hadn’t prompted a frantic, three a.m. call to Spencer. He could do without every thought about his new pet linking back inexplicably to his old best friend. Spencer is still his best friend, maybe--that is, no one else has filled the role Spencer used to play in his life. He has new people in roles he didn’t even know he needed to exist when he was younger, though. The most important person in his life right now is himself, and he thinks maybe that’s healthy, but it also makes him uncomfortable, and this right here is exactly why he tries not to think about Spencer too often these days. It only ends in tears. Well. Not literal tears. Obviously. Ryan’s head is maybe a bit of a mess, but Spike takes advantage of that moment to take a bounding leap into his lap, and yes, this was his original mental point, wasn’t it? Spike totally acts like his cat already.

Still, Jon is going on, twisting around in his seat as he says, “--know you’re more of a dog person, but she’s really taken to you. I’d bring her home myself, but I was thinking about it and with the way she isn’t really over the whole biting thing yet, I’d be too nervous to leave her alone with Dylan and Clover.” At the glare Ryan is pretty sure he sends Jon automatically, almost against his will, Jon hurries to assure him, “Not that I think she means any harm, you know? It’s just that she’s only little, she’s still working on her self control, and my cats are small, too. They only have so much blood to give before they get seriously hurt.”

Jon may have a point--the dessicated little mouse-bodies Spike leaves behind when she’s done eating are more than a little horrifying. It also means Ryan doesn’t have to fight to keep her (he’s surprised to realize he would if he needed to, though). He nods as graciously as he can, already mentally preparing things he’ll have to store so Spike and her eager claws don’t destroy them.

…

Z loves Spike, of course. “She’s adorable and dangerous,” she says, the first day they meet, “If anyone’s going to understand that, it’s me.” The admiration doesn’t go both ways, though. Tennessee says cats have never really loved Z. She says it in an undertone, though, later, when they're the only two in the kitchen. Charlotte had cats when they were growing up. Ryan is learning to feel out the sore spots with his new friends.

Alex is a lot better with Spike, probably because he doesn’t care as much. He’ll pet her idly when she walks along the back of Ryan’s couch, but he doesn’t try to seek her out. Having a cat makes Ryan think about how much like people cats are, sometimes.

…

Spencer has a couple of theories about why exactly Ryan called him out of the blue at two or three in the morning last month, and both of them are a little worrying. First, there’s the thought that maybe Ryan was stoned out of his mind and paranoid with it, convinced that some stray cat Jon picked up (because apparently Spencer really was the voice of reason, and without him around they’ve taken to doing incredibly stupid things) which was biting him was doing so to suck his blood, instead of just teething or whatever it is that kittens do. Spencer doesn’t know--he’s more of a dog person, anyway.

The other is that Ryan thinks Spencer is still pissed about the split, and has decided that the only way for them to have a civil conversation is to call about ridiculous emergencies. Spencer hopes it isn’t that, but Ryan has always been kind of hopeless about making stories up on the spot, so it wouldn’t entirely surprise him. Still, whatever it is, Spencer feels kind of obligated to stop by and check that nothing is seriously wrong, now that they’re back from tour.

Well, now that they’ve been back from tour a few days. Spencer didn’t want to seem worried that an imaginary cat has eaten Ryan or anything. Though if anyone could manage to get eaten by an animal weird enough not to even be an actual mythological creature, it would be Ryan. Spencer rings the doorbell.

It’s only a second before the door swings open, and Ryan is already talking when it does, opening the door but twisting his head behind him to shout, “--An eye on her for a sec, we’ve got reinforcements,” swinging back to Spencer to say, “Thank god, three heads are way fucking better than--you’re not Alex.”

“Nope.” It’s not the reaction Spencer was expecting, but at least it’s accurate. Spencer is not now and never has been named Alex “Maybe I can help anyway?”

“Quick, come in so I can shut the door before Spike gets out.”

“Spike?”

“My cat.” Spencer has never liked it when Ryan looks at him like he’s the crazy one. He steps in just as Z skids down the hallway in stockinged feet, saying, breathless, “So I’ve got it trapped in the laundry room now, and I tried to bring Spike over again, but she keeps running from me.”

Ryan looks back over his shoulder and tells Spencer, “I thought about doing what you said and buying her raw meat, but they usually drain a lot of the blood out of that before they sell it, and I think she likes fresh better anyway, so I’ve been buying her those live pet store mice, you know, for snakes? Only, she’s not so good at catching them. It wasn’t really that much of an issue in the van, where there wasn’t really anywhere for them to hide, but this is the second one she’s managed to lose since we got home, and I wasn’t going to let this one get away to hide in the walls.” He shivers a little at the thought and says, “You can hear them scrabbling in there at night.”

Ryan looks totally serious and Z is looking speculative and Spencer somehow finds himself nodding like any of that makes actual sense in the real world. He doesn’t even ask questions. Still, he has to double-take when he first sees the cat. Spike looks as innocuous and sweet as it’s possible for a kitten to look, all yellow and orange stripes and bright eyes, pouncing after her own tail on the hardwood floor of Ryan’s living room. She looks like any other kitten, until she looks up and meows at them, darting under a chair when Spencer follows the other two in the room. She opens her mouth and Spencer can see her teeth, the two long ones on the outside edges of the front of her little muzzle, which extend what Spencer is sure is far longer then they ought to, proportionately.

“You weren’t kidding about the blood sucking thing?” Spencer asks a little weakly. Ryan only shakes his head distractedly and goes down awkwardly on bony knees to coax the kitten out from where she’s crouched against the wall under a chair, murmuring to her, “Come out, come out, I promise I won’t let Z hold you,” Z aims a kick at him at that, “And aren’t you hungry, Spike? Come eat so I don’t have to lock you out of the bedroom tonight.”

“You let her sleep in your bed?” Spencer asks, incredulous, when Ryan emerges from under the chair, brushing dust off his knees with his free hand when he stands, other hand holding the kitten to his chest. “Only when she’s not hungry,” he replies, a little defensive. “She hardly ever bites at all anymore, and I always wake up when she does.” Spencer knows that defensive cast to Ryan’s tone. It means he’s sure enough that he’s wrong that he’s already decided to keep doing whatever he’s doing anyway, and no argument is really going to convince him to do otherwise. It doesn’t matter whether the argument against him is right or not. Spencer lets it go. Instead, he follows Ryan and Z, presumably towards the laundry room. It’s kind of a weird procession, but not nearly as strange as the sight of Spike feeding. Still, it’s kind of...

“Awesome, right?” Ryan asks, the same pride in his voice that Brendon gets after managing to teach Bogart a trick. And yeah, in a gory, freaky way, it’s exactly the kind of thing Ryan and Spencer would have been totally awed by as kids. “Yeah. It’s pretty awesome.”

…

The biggest problem Ryan has with Alex around Spike is continually trying to convince him not to post pictures of her on the internet. He tries so hard to be persuasive, Ryan actually starts to worry a little. Z says it’s just that Alex gets fixated when people tell him ‘no’. Still, he goes from, “Don’t you ever want to do like Walker and make your pet as famous as you are?” to, “They’ll think we’ve got the most awesome photoshop skills when they see those fangs, don’t you want a tech-savvy reputation?”

Alex obviously doesn’t understand the seriousness of the situation. Animal testing is totally legal, Ryan thinks, and from what he’s seen, Spike is pretty one of a kind. He’s not going to invite any attention about her.

…

Brendon insists he’s only going over to see Ryan’s freak-of-nature pet, which he wouldn’t believe actually existed if it were anyone but Spencer doing the telling. He acts like the probability of running into Ryan at Ryan’s party in Ryan’s house is nothing more than a coincidental inconvenience. Spencer suspects differently, but he knows better than to say so. He had already resigned himself to going to this party alone when Brendon had suddenly acquired this change of heart, even if it was accompanied by a deluded new viewpoint.

Spencer can’t help but be glad Brendon is coming with him; he likes Ryan’s new friends, he thinks--Alex was cool enough on the Honda Civic tour and he likes Z alright from the little he saw of her the other day at Ryan’s while feeding Spike. And Jon and he have been friends for years now. If he’s okay with Ryan, seeing Jon again should be fine. Fun, even. So no, the problem isn’t that he doesn’t like the party’s probable attendees so much as that he doesn’t know them. With Brendon coming, at least he knows he won’t get trapped alone in a corner somewhere, or worse, awkwardly forcing his way into conversations he doesn’t click with. There’s no way he would ever stoop to trailing around after Ryan, though. It was never an option.

Brendon has already announced that meeting Spike his his mission, the entire point of driving down to Ryan’s, and Spencer thinks he shouldn’t be surprised when Brendon brushes past Ryan when he opens the door for them, saying, “Yeah, yeah, great to see you, Ross--where’s your cat?”

Ryan shoots Spencer a slightly wounded look, which--what? Since when has Spencer been expected to take responsibility for Brendon’s behavior? He shrugs in what he hopes is a mostly apologetic way, though. “What can I say? He suddenly really likes cats.” Ryan shuts the door behind them, saying, “He probably won’t have any luck. She gets skittish with this many people in the house--she’s been hiding under the couch for the last hour and a half.”

Ryan is doomed to be surprised about this, though--Spencer finds himself thinking a lot more viciously than he’d really like that at this point, Ryan really ought to be done with underestimating Brendon. He’s aware that his sudden and mostly unwanted rush of faded anger has a lot more to do with catty interviews and fights that were supposed to end when being in the same band did than it does with anything going on right now. There was a while when being angry at Ryan had felt cleansing, justified. It isn’t a bright, empowering feeling to hold onto now--it’s just a shadow of a feeling of satisfaction when Brendon straightens from his crouched position half-under Ryan’s couch with a loudly-purring Spike stretched out on her back on Brendon’s arm, fuzzy belly exposed as he scritches under her chin.

Under Spencer’s own sigh of relief (Brendon had looked kind of dumb on his hands and knees reaching under Ryan’s couch in the middle of a party) he thinks he hears Ryan mutter ‘traitor’ in Spike’s general direction. He lets it go, though, and the only really tense moment of the evening comes two beers later when Brendon makes some kind of crack about Ryan and Spike and, “Like calling to like.” He starts laughing at his own not-quite-rhyme, though, or possibly at the allusion to Z’s band name, and the tenseness of the moment breaks.

…

Jon is a laid-back guy. This fact goes beyond common knowledge and has entered the realm of gospel truth in the mind of pretty much anyone who knows him. He is a laid-back guy, but not only does he also have cats, but he has adorable cats. And he had them first. He doesn’t get why suddenly Ryan gets a cat and it’s a big deal. Well. He does get it--the idea of Ryan being the sole party responsible for caring for another living creature is somehow simultaneously hilarious and terrifying. Still, that doesn’t mean everyone has to fawn about it.

Jon retaliates by going back to Chicago and aggressively tweeting some pictures of Dylan and Clover at their most adorable. No one pays much attention. Well, that’s not true. About fifty Panic fans who don’t let unimportant things (like the lineups of bands) effect important things (like kittens) and Tom all tell him he has the best, most perfect kitties. Tom maybe does so over the phone instead of online, in that tone of voice he uses when he’s trying to be soothing that mostly just makes him sound kind of stoned, but it’s the thought that counts. Tom has maybe had to hear more about the Ryan situation than he really wants to. Tom maybe thinks Jon is going to sabotage his future and his own happiness because he is over-invested in his cats. Tom might be right.

“But it’s like--I’m the one who found Spike. I’m the one who named her. Ryan doesn’t even like cats!”

“I bet Ryan likes his cat,” Tom says, and then seems to register that he’s made a mistake. He might think so because he can suddenly her the pounding of Jon’s fingers on the keyboard, furiously clicking the mouse into flight regulations for pets on airplanes.

“Pete loves Clover. Pete saw Clover when she was just a kitten.”

“I’m sure Pete still loves Clover.”

“Pete needs to stop texting me and asking if I can get Ryan over to meet his new cat because Brendon won’t shut up about it.”

“It?”

“Her. Brendon won’t shut up about her. I still like Spike.”

Tom doesn’t say that Jon sounds kind of defensive, but only because he thinks a more important point would be, “You can’t bring your cats down to L.A. You’re not allowed, Jon, I will get Cassie to back me up if I need to.”

Jon hangs up, but he doesn’t buy a ticket after all. He does tweet a picture of Marley, though.

…

It’s nice just having some time to hang out with Ryan again, even if his cat is looking at Spencer like she wants to eat him. He mentions as much to Ryan, and if this were anyone else, or maybe more to the point, if this were any other pet, it would come across as a figure of speech, but Ryan looks mildly concerned, says he only fed her this morning. “No,” Spencer says, because he’s been over here enough lately, he’s surprised to realize, that he now know the tail-twitchy thing Spike does when she’s hungry and preparing to pounce, and this isn’t it. “She just keeps staring at me. I think she’s jealous that you’re not paying attention to her.”

Ryan looks again, laughs and shakes his head and says, “No, she’s just after your beer, dude. Don’t set it on the floor unless you want cat-cooties.”

“Cat-cooties? What are we, eight?”

“Germs. Whatever. Is that scientific enough for you, Mister Maturity?”

“You’re just at your wittiest tonight, Ross.”

Spencer is feeling pretty good again, pretty relaxed, focused on the conversation, which is why he doesn’t think when he sets his beer down on the floor, reaching over to snag the bag of chips back from Ryan and wondering idly why the hell there isn’t a coffee table near the couch.

In a second, Spike has pounced. Her fangs clank awkwardly around the neck of the bottle, while her tongue works furiously at the mouth of it. Spencer shoots a glare at Ryan, who shrugs, unrepentant. “I think maybe she likes the salt in it? Or maybe she’s just trying to get drunk.”

…

Cassie agrees with Tom, which is frustrating, but not altogether unexpected. In his calmer moments, even Jon knows he’s being a little irrational. He still doesn’t want to go back down to L.A. to start working on the next album.

“Maybe you shouldn’t, then,” Cassie says. “It’s not like the album’s going to be any good if you can’t stand to be around the rest of your band.”

She may have a point. Still, “What am I going to say? ‘I can’t deal with the way everyone likes your cat?’”

“Of course you don’t tell him that,” she says, sarcastic and kind of biting And why does Jon love her again?

“Just tell them something else. Tell them…” She holds up her left hand, engagement ring shining, “Tell them you need time off to get married.” She’s grinning kind of wickedly and oh, yeah, that’s why.


End file.
